Ed Steer says it again: "if the bullion banks weren't there to beat the living crap out of the price in New York every day, gold would have been much much higher than it is now."

I can't count the times I've read writers (not necessarily Ed) who say that gold is capped by the cartel yet speak of gold going to thousands of dollars. Ummm....Now how's gold supposed to fly if the cartel keeps clipping its wings? Poor gold bird is down to feather stumps as it is.

Is the cartel going to run out of gold to lease and give up? I've heard that one for years. Will humongous gold buying overwhelm the cartel? Shouldn't that have happened already? Will the fed or treasury call in gold and screw up PM share trading somehow and then goose the price into the thousands themselves? Will GLD turn out to be an empty shell with just a puny amount of physical gold to lease to the big boys leaving them out there swinging in the breeze? Might it be they'll give us a couple of hundred points one day just to shut us up?

Or maybe the cartel will just let gold inch up 10 or 15% a year, as has been suggested over on GATA as having been going on for years now, and I suspect may be more our fate, until guys like me are no longer on this side of the grass? Or what? Just saying gold's going skyward this month or next just doesn't seem to work for me. Inquiring minds would like to know.

In the meantime, I continue to feel like the guy playing blackjack, counting cards even though it seems like the dealer has 30 decks in the shoe, and wondering why I'm not winning when the count goes way positive. No wonder the dealer smiles while he rakes in my chips.

And now there's the following this morning from GATA. Sound familiar?

Le Metropole Members,

Justice Litle: Official sales won't hurt gold anymore

Submitted by cpowell on 05:12PM ET Sunday, March 1, 2009. Section: Daily Dispatches

8:11p ET Sunday, March 1, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Justice Litle, editorial director for the Taipan Publishing Group newsletters, argues in his latest essay that neither threats by the International Monetary Fund and U.S. government to sell gold nor actual sales of such gold are likely to suppress the gold price much, insofar as too many governments with huge and depreciating dollar surpluses probably would scoop up any and all gold made available that way. Litle's essay, "Why the IMF and Fort Knox Won't Put the Hurt on Gold," can be found at the Taipan Publishing site here:

http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com...